


Part 5: Frances

by oiuytrewq36



Series: We Will Survive [5]
Category: Queer as Folk (US)
Genre: F/F, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-18
Updated: 2020-08-18
Packaged: 2021-03-06 08:56:23
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,810
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25966990
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/oiuytrewq36/pseuds/oiuytrewq36
Summary: Justin isn’t even all the way through the door before he’s asking me what’s wrong, which is probably a bad sign. I shrug and say “Rough day.”“This is your sad playlist, and that tube of Pringles was full this morning,” he says. “What’s going on?”“How do you know what my sad playlist is?”“I lived with Brian. I’m an expert at figuring out other people’s emotions before they know they’re having them.”
Relationships: Ben Bruckner/Michael Novotny, Brian Kinney/Justin Taylor (Queer as Folk)
Series: We Will Survive [5]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1881736
Comments: 10
Kudos: 44





	Part 5: Frances

**Author's Note:**

> it is possible, though unlikely, that I'll be writing another chapter to this at some point, but I might just publish it as a separate work if I do.

Justin isn’t even all the way through the door before he’s asking me what’s wrong, which is probably a bad sign. I shrug and say “Rough day.”

“This is your sad playlist, and that tube of Pringles was full this morning,” he says. “What’s going on?”

“How do you know what my sad playlist is?”

“I lived with Brian. I’m an expert at figuring out other people’s emotions before they know they’re having them.”

I sigh. “It’s stupid.”

“Okay, then tell me.”

I close my laptop. “I don’t want to go home for the holidays.”

He just looks at me.

“My parents are taking this big trip to Ireland this year, and they’re really excited for it and I’m excited for them, but that means that I have to go to Schenectady and eat at one of my aunts’ houses for Christmas dinner, which means lots of impossibly boring conversations and in-laws staring at my piercings and questions about why I don’t have children.”

“What would they say if you told them you weren’t going?”

“That’s the thing. If I say that, they’ll want to know why, and I’ll have to make up an excuse, and they’ll ask me about it until I slip up, and then I’ll be guilted into going to the next ten non-holiday family dinners as well as Christmas.”

He taps his fingers on the bookcase, eyes narrowed. Then he brightens.

“What if you told them that your awesome new roommate is _begging_ you to come to Pittsburgh with him for Christmas because you just _have _to meet all his friends there, and you don’t really want to but you don’t want to disappoint him? Making myself the martyr always worked on my parents.”__

__I smile. “You’re an evil genius, as usual, but I don’t want to-”_ _

__“Fuck off with your weird-ass guilt complex,” he says. “Daphne would be so happy to see you, and believe me, one more person at Debbie’s house for Christmas won’t mean anyone goes hungry. And I know I’ve told you a little about the people there, but you’d love them, and I can show you Liberty Avenue, and-”_ _

__He has that look he gets when he’s building up steam on an idea, and now I actually don’t want to disappoint him, so there’s my grain of truth, I guess._ _

__***_ _

__That’s how I end up on a mid-morning flight to Pittsburgh on the day when I’d usually be packing up my most normal clothes and replacing half the jewelry on my head with Bioflex labrets. I almost never travel with other people, and generally that’s the way I like it, but Justin makes an okay plane buddy, sketching the passengers around us and the view out the windows until his hand starts spasming and then trading customer-service horror stories with me afterwards. The gallery where he’s been working for the last few months is shut down until the new year and I’ve taken a week off of work, so it’s the first time in a while where neither of us has a billion things on our plate, and it’s nice to spend the hour-and-a-half before we land just hanging, the way we did in the first few weeks after he moved in._ _

__When we get to baggage claim, our welcome committee is waiting. Justin and Brian eat each other’s faces while Daphne and I do the squealing-hugging-omg-it’s-so-good-to-see-you!!!!! thing (Well, she squeals. I hug her and make lower-pitched cheerful sounds). Then we switch, Justin and Daphne hugging and jumping up and down, and me and Brian nodding to each other and turning to watch them in amicable silence. Justin and I pick up our bags, and we all pile into Daphne’s Land Rover and drive into the city._ _

__As we drive in, Brian and Justin making out in the backseat and Daphne talking a mile a minute, I realize that I’ve missed Pittsburgh more than I thought. New York always has my heart, but there’s something so different about racing down an elevated highway with the forested cliffs, split at points by funicular railway tracks, banking us on both sides, the Point State Park fountain leaping a hundred feet in the air. Daphne drops the boys off at their building, an old industrial tower on a street I don’t know, and then we drive over to her apartment._ _

“I can’t believe you’re here!” she says for the eleventh time, practically bounding around her place, which is a lot nicer than it was when we were working at Froggy’s downtown. “I want to know _everything_.”

__I drop my bag on the air mattress and marvel at the square footage that money can buy when you’re not in the greatest city in the world. “Did I tell you about the love triangle happening in the marketing department a few weeks ago?” I ask._ _

__“The guy with the five Chihuahuas and the two blond women?”_ _

“Yeah, and you won't _believe_ what the one with the fake eyelashes did the other day.”

***

After I’ve finished filling Daphne in on the latest developments in my office’s internal soap opera, she puts on her jacket and I put on my favorite bloodred eyeshadow, and we go to meet the guys at the Liberty Diner for lunch. I probably have to hand in my queer card for this, but I never set foot on Liberty Avenue when I was living here - between school, the bar, and more school, I’d never had time. It’s the lunch rush, and people are streaming in and out of the door. I watch a guy in full leather getup and a Santa hat walking arm-in-arm with a fabulously bouffanted drag queen as Daphne opens the door, and then she’s pulling me over to a booth where Brian and Justin are sitting with a guy in a BAZINGA! T-shirt who’s gesturing animatedly as he speaks. Justin looks over and spots us.

__“Hey!” he says, then adds, “Come on, move over,” to Brian so that Daphne can squeeze into their side of the booth. I sit down next to T-shirt Guy, and Justin says, “Frances, this is Michael. Michael, this is my roommate, Frances.”_ _

__Michael nods and says hello. He looks a little terrified of me, which is a reaction I get occasionally from men who don’t know what to make of my whole … thing. I don’t begrudge him for it too much, mostly because I take a certain sadistic pleasure in weirding people out._ _

__“She won’t bite, Mikey,” Brian says from where he’s sprawled over the bench (how is he sprawling in a crowded booth?). He grins across the table at me._ _

__Michael flips him off without even looking at him, and my respect for him immediately jumps a few notches. “I hope these two haven’t been disrupting your sleep schedule too much,” he says, waving a hand at the other side of the table. Justin and Daphne snicker, and Brian throws a balled-up napkin at him._ _

__“Believe me, Justin’s the best roommate I’ve ever had,” I say, and I can almost feel his smile from across the table. “Just as an example, the last one stole my bike and then tried to sell it back to me.”_ _

__Michael’s eyes go very wide. Based on what Justin’s told me, that’s how he reacts to literally everything, but it’s always nice to have a willing audience. “What, really?”_ _

__“I think she didn’t know it was mine.”_ _

__“Does that make it better or worse?” Justin asks, but I don’t get a chance to answer, because then a very loud woman with about fifty-three thousand buttons on her rainbow vest yells “SUNSHINE!” in a cigarette-roughened voice and nearly knocks Daphne out of the booth when she leans over the table to hug Justin. I don’t really need to use many of my (excellent) inductive reasoning skills to guess who she is._ _

__Debbie is wearing a T-shirt with a headless stick figure on it with the caption NEED HEAD, which I appreciate. She looks at me. “And you must be the roommate!”_ _

__I smile. “That’s me. Thanks for letting me join in on your Christmas this year.”_ _

__She flaps a hand at me. “Hey, the more the merrier, right? Now, honey, what can I get you?”_ _

__***_ _

__I take a nap when we get back to the apartment, and then Daph and I order pizza from the place on Middle and watch _Grey’s Anatomy_ and catch up until Justin calls. He wants to show me around Liberty Avenue’s nightlife, so I put on my spangliest dress and my blue vinyl boots and go over to his and Brian’s place with Daphne. Justin buzzes us up, and he’s sliding the door open just as the scary elevator drops us at the right floor. _ _

__The loft is … intimidating and beautiful, if a little odd. Justin looks at me expectantly._ _

__I spin around once, slowly. “This isn’t an apartment, this is a classy sex lair,” I say._ _

__“Thank you,” Brian says, jumping down the stairs from what I assume is the bedroom (bed platform?) and buttoning up his shirt. “That’s exactly the idea.”_ _

__He looks at me and Daphne. “Ready, ladies?”_ _

__I’ve gone clubbing with Justin a few times, but never with him and Brian together. Between them, Brian in a sleeveless black button-down and jeans and Justin in cargo pants and a T-shirt that says “breakfast included”, they make an odd pair, leaning on the Woody’s bar counter, although the fact that they’ve barely stopped holding hands since we got here mostly destroys that impression. It’s kind of sweet, in its own way._ _

__Michael shows up soon after we arrive with a tall buff guy in tow who I’m guessing is Ben. Justin introduces me (I’m right, of course) and Ben asks me and Justin about New York and our place while the others look on._ _

__Justin’s in the middle of a story about the time he saw Keanu Reeves on the subway when two more of his friends show up. Ted Schmidt looks exactly like I would imagine a guy who’s named Ted Schmidt to look like, but he doesn’t blink when he first looks at me, so I note him down as a secret cool dude. Emmett compliments my boots before even asking who I am, which I think means we’re fated to become best friends. He turns to Michael and says, “So where’s my beautiful goddaughter?”_ _

__“Lindsay and Melanie are flying in with her and Gus tomorrow,” Ben says. I look at Justin, who says, “Brian and Michael’s kids’ lesbian mothers.” I nod and decide that I’m not even going to ask._ _

__Brian is laughing silently at me behind his glass. “Have we scared you off yet?” he asks._ _

__I snort. “Nope. Try harder.”_ _

__Brian drains his drink and turns to the rest of the group. “Ready for Babylon?”_ _

**Author's Note:**

> Yes, this story is set in 2006 and The Big Bang Theory didn’t start until 2007, so there’s no way Michael’s T-shirt would have existed at the time, but screw it. I’m probably going to mess with real-world timelines again in the future to fit my ideas because I’m a control freak, just so you know.
> 
> Also, if you know Pittsburgh, you may notice that I’ve tried to work in a few elements of the real city alongside the fictionalized version that’s in the show, which was mostly filmed in Canada. If you’re ever there, get coffee and a croissant at La Gourmandine on Forbes and go sit by the Point State Park fountain for me - the view is like nothing else you’ll ever see in an American city.


End file.
